NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/sys/ibm/pc/hardware/20146

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-23 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!mips!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ucla-cs!ucla-se!babbage.seas.ucla.edu
From: [e-mail] (Ira H. Nydick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Clock speed is messing up my hard drive (help!)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jul 92 07:12:08 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: SEASnet, University of California, Los Angeles
Lines: 25

Hi,

Thanks to everyone who responded to my cry for help with my Maxtor
7120AT IDE drive.  I think I found the problem (after going in cirles,
of course).  As some of you suspected, it seems that the clock speed
of my CPU is the culprit.  The problem was that my computer would hang
in various instances during disk access.  I found that if I switched off
the 'turbo' button, the computer would 'unhang' and complete the disk
access task happily.  The turbo button increases the clock speed from
20 to 25 Mhz.  I was wondering, can someone explain to me why the clock
speed is messing up hard drive I/O?  I assume that somehow my IDE card
can't handle the speed.  Is this common?  Will a higher quality IDE card
solve my problem? (mine is a $15 Taiwan-made model)   Anybody have a
similar experience with this?  I still want  to be able to run my computer
at the full 25 Mhz speed.  My motherboard is currently set 6 Mhz I/O clock
speed, 3 wait state for 16-bit I/O, and 7 wait state for 8-bit I/O if
that is important.

Also, many people suggested that my BIOS is incompatible with IDE drives
Could this still cause me problems even though the main culprit seems to
be clock speed?  Thanks in advance.

Ira